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On Thursday, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump took the liberal stance on transgender restroom access. Media outlets can call it "moderate" all they want, but it is inescapable that Trump defended biological men using women's restrooms. The Donald is not exactly hesitant to offend people, and transgressing political correctness has been one of the centerpieces of his campaign. He even declared in the past that he would protect Christians and social conservatives, but this acceptance of "transgender rights" may be a sign that he has started pandering to the "center" for the general election.Conservatives have long warned that Trump is unpredictable,...

Donald Trump on Thursday hammered a controversial North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Trump told NBC that North Carolina is "paying a big price" for the controversial legislation, and said the state has created problems that did not previously exist.

On Tuesday evening, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) blew out 2016 Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in Wisconsin. As of 10:30 PM ET, Cruz had won well over 50 percent of the vote. Trump is expected to win just six of 42 delegates. This came within hours of the Trump campaign declaring the possibility of a big comeback in Wisconsin. So, what does all of this mean? Here are six takeaways: Trump Does Indeed Have A Ceiling. The field has consolidated, but Trump isn’t walking away with huge margins of victory. In fact, in the three states since the field winnowed...

On the day before the Wisconsin primary, an Emerson College Polling Society poll shows Ted Cruz maintaining a 5 point lead over Donald Trump. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has an 8 point lead over Hillary Clinton.The ECPS poll of likely Republican primary voters fits squarely with the results of other polls tracked by Real Clear Politics. RCP currently has Cruz up 6.5 in its latest average of polls (which includes the Emerson poll). Cruz wins with men (43%-36%) and women (35%-32%) and leads Trump strongly among Republicans (46%-31%). That last result tracks with Trump’s favorability among Republicans...

In Politico's Playbook newsletter on Monday morning, there's a bit of inside-D.C. nonsense that neatly represents why the city's political class reads Playbook. Maybe, it suggests, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan could end up being the nominee! Skeptical? Well, A Guy did some math:

So I asked Bitey the Dog about her views on NATO, and she responded by growling and attacking my sock. In doing so, she offered a more comprehensive, insightful, and sane commentary on this vital alliance than the putative Republican frontrunner. Yes, it’s been a bad couple weeks for Donald Trump. Let’s review: · His skeevy attacks on Ted Cruz’s wife confirmed his status, in the eyes of women, as America’s nightmare first husband. · His transparent plant of the bizarre “Ted Cruz, Sex God” story in his pal’s pseudo-paper offended anyone who doesn’t require a drool bib. · He...

Three days. Five categorically different statements about abortion. Donald Trump officially has more flip-flops than Old Navy, and yet his supporters stand by him because they feel the economy is more important. More important to trust a man who has bankrupted several of his businesses because he borrowed too much money at too high of rates because bankers didn’t have enough faith in his business plans to give him normal lending rates. More important to trust a man who “stands” against illegal immigration despite being fined for hiring illegal immigrants to work on his projects and having hired illegal immigrants...

MADISON, WISCONSIN—Calling Donald Trump's recent oscillations on abortion "bizarre," Ted Cruz laid out his own view on abortion in a Fox News town hall the day before Wisconsin's primary. Over the past week, Donald Trump has oscillated between advocating "punishments" for mothers seeking abortions, and saying abortion should be kept legal. Cruz knocked Trump's "bizarre" statements. "It showed that he has not considered seriously this issue." A self-described pro-choice moderate voter asked Cruz if his presidency would lead to outlawing abortion. "We should protect all life," Cruz said, arguing for the issue to be settled through the democratic process, as...

Whatever else can be said about Donald Trump, everyone can agree he is a provocateur who, intentionally or not, stirs controversy on subjects to which little political attention has been focused. He has injected a new issue in the presidential campaign by referring to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as “obsolete” and arguing that the United States was spending too much money on it, while some or many of the other countries were “freeloaders.” It is improbable that Trump has thought long or deeply on the subject of NATO, but he has opened a genuine debate on it. NATO,...

Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has stunned the Republican Party. But if he survives a late revolt by his rivals and other leaders to become the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, the electoral map now coming into view is positively forbidding. In recent head-to-head polls with one Democrat whom Mr. Trump may face in the fall, Hillary Clinton, he trails in every key state, including Florida and Ohio, despite her soaring unpopularity ratings with swing voters. In Democratic-leaning states across the Rust Belt, which Mr. Trump has vowed to return to the Republican column for the first time in...

Are you familiar with Mrs. Silence Dogood?How about Publius?They are a pseudonym (fictional pen name) and an allonym (a historical pen name) employed by men in our Founding Generation. Ben Franklin wrote as the widow “Mrs. Silence Dogood” and James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay shared the name “Publius” in making the case for U.S. Constitution in The Federalist Papers.  The anonymity provided by these pen names allowed focus on the argument not the author.  The anonymity safeguarded the author from political retribution or worse.   These founders, who did not disclose their identity, understood the value of political speech and...

A Unified Fields Theory Until Trump changed the subject to punishing women for having abortions, the Trump obsession of the week was Michelle Fields. I’m glad that story is largely gone. I don’t think it was good for Fields or for the forces opposed to Trump. And it distracted from more important stories, like Trump’s willingness to nuke Europe. RELATED: If Donald Trump Were Eight, His Behavior Might Be Endearing Without rehashing the whole thing again with reference to frame-by-frame analysis best left for the Zapruder film, let me just say I think all of the important and relevant facts...

Breathe easy, America. Before you judge Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban too harshly, consider this: It will not apply to Muslims who are, A. Donald Trump's friends, and B. rich. Feel better? The Republican presidential candidate, with a totally straight face, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday that he has "a lot of friends that are Muslim," many of whom are "rich" and would get special treatment to let them in the country....

You can’t win if you’re this disliked. Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is pretty sanguine about the Democratic Party’s chances in a general election should Donald Trump become the Republican Party’s nominee. Unlike the labor wing of the party, which worries about Trump’s appeal to working-class white voters, and operatives who fear a scorched-earth campaign, Weiner says the real estate tycoon’s inherent flaws will ultimately doom his candidacy. Put simply, Trump’s campaign reminds Weiner of his own race for mayor of New York City in 2013. “Donald Trump, if he’s the nominee, with 65 percent negatives, is not going to...

By this time, everyone with a television, a smart phone or a computer has already seen the MSNBC town hall exchange between Chris Matthews and Donald Trump where the abortion question came up. (Even if you lack all three of those modern devices, you may have caught wind of it via the screams of horror emanating from the windows of your neighbors, both Democrat and Republican.) But on the odd chance that you were in a coma for the past sixteen hours and happened to turn to Hot Air before doing anything else this morning, here’s the short but brutal...

Poll: Nearly Half Of Republican Women Wouldn't Vote For Trump By GABBY MORRONGIELLO 3/24/16 A new survey of women voters suggests a general election contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be disastrous for the Republican Party. Nearly half of the female Republican electorate (47 percent) currently has a difficult time imagining voting for Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Far fewer say the same of Trump's two remaining opponents, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (32 percent) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (27 percent). Trump also has the worst favorability rating...

With the prospect of a contested convention looming over the Republican presidential primary, Donald J. Trump on Sunday complained about the party’s rules requiring a candidate to have a majority of delegates to clinch the nomination outright. Asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” why he should be “guaranteed the nomination” if he failed to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win it on the first ballot, Mr. Trump said that he might be unable to clear that threshold. But he blamed the number of contenders in the Republican field. “If I’m a little bit short – and one...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that "professional agitators" bore much of the blame for violence at his rallies as video showed a protester being beaten and another apparently being grabbed by Trump's campaign manager. Speaking on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Trump defended campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and declined to condemn supporters who have attacked protesters at his increasingly chaotic rallies. Nor did he back down from his warning that there would be riots in the streets if the Republican Party denied him the nomination for the November election, despite his being the most popular candidate among Republican voters....